


Caffeine Problem

by semele



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-08-14 22:07:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8030590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/pseuds/semele
Summary: Bellamy Blake, halfway through junior year or college, has three things to worry about. One, his caffeine problem is getting worse by the day. Two, his best friend is a troll. Three, a year ago he took what's possibly the dumbest bet in his life.





	1. Go Fuck Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> I'm suffering through a writer's block from hell, and this is a desperate attempt to unblock myself. Please expect shy, awkward fools trying to date and not being too good at it.

Bellamy Blake doesn’t really have that many vices. He only smokes when he’s really stressed, doesn’t drink unless it’s with Miller, goes on TV binges just when it’s a really good show, and as for coffee…

Fine. Fine, have it your way. So he is Vice Central. A cesspool of vices. Big deal. Bottom line is, he needs coffee. Now. 

He has to read at least fifty pages today if he wants to keep up with his schedule, he calculates as he puts on his boots, _The Little Stranger_ heavy in his backpack. It’s already sweater weather, and he looks like some failed hipster with his scarf and glasses, heading out to a coffee shop to read a vaguely high brow historical novel before it becomes cool. Whatever. First things first. Coffee.

To be fair, _The Little Stranger_ will probably never ever be cool, so it might just be that Bellamy is scoring some honest to God hipster points for reading it while drinking coffee, but this is his second year as a literature major, and reading four ambitious novels at the same time lost its charm some time ago, not to mention that he now has Opinions about what constitutes an ambitious book. Of course Bellamy isn’t all books. He also has a life, a full and vibrant life, and if Nate Miller can’t see that from behind all these books, that’s really Nate Miller’s fucking problem.

“You look like a loser. You act like a loser,” he explained mercilessly almost a year ago, as if being a theater major got him any moral high ground. Get in line, Hamlet. “Your ass is too good for this shit. You’re wasting a great ass. It’s criminal.”

Bellamy, having been in this weird state in between, not drunk enough to discuss his ass with Nate but just enough to do something stupid, rolled his eyes.

“I’m not a loser,” he pointed out, and sipped on his beer pointedly for good measure. “I could be getting laid. If I’m not, that’s just because I’m growing as a person.”

“Growing as a person my ass,” murmured Nate, because apparently ass was the theme of the day. “You’ll graduate a virgin, and it will be because you are a loser with no life.”

“I’m not a virgin,” said Bellamy dryly, because Miller knows (high school, senior year), he knows, oh how does he know.

“It will grow back out of sheer disuse,” said Miller without missing a beat.

“What will grow back?”

“Metaphors, you nerd.”

And then, taunted by regrown metaphorical virginity, Bellamy made a bet he’s been regretting for at least the last three months, and the last week in particular, because Miller, being a first rate asshole, has been counting down days from twenty one, and he sends Bellamy a chirpy reminder message with the current number every fucking morning.

As of now, Bellamy Blake has fifteen days to get laid, or else he will have to admit to actually having no life. Which, blatantly a lie. He so has a life. Watch him walk to a coffee shop to read an assigned book in an obviously lively fashion.

***

The coffee shop is a small, vaguely artsy place, and as soon as Bellamy enters, he starts feeling bad about the money he’s about to spend when he could just make coffee at home and read the novel in his own bed. He’s a pretentious asshole, that’s who he is.

No. He’s a responsible adult who doesn’t let his studies swallow him whole, and who finds time to socialize even when he has to study. If by “socialize” you mean “sit in a shop surrounded by strangers and not speak to anyone for three hours”.

Whatever. The coffee is good.

But the money guilt is still there, so he orders a flat white instead of anything fancy, smiles at the barista in lieu of actual social interaction, then finally sinks into his book.

He is about half an hour into the book and a few sips into the coffee when a small muffin lands in front of him. He looks up, confused, channeling doctor Faraday just a touch too well, only to be confronted by a very raised eyebrow and the rest of a very attractive barista.

“On the house,” she informs him curtly, then smiles when he grins at her, a knee-jerk reaction to free food. “How’s your book?”

“Needed coffee,” he replies stupidly, his eyes darting automatically to the girl’s name tag. Probably to check if anything changed since he last ogled it on Wednesday. 

“I get that a lot,” says Raven with a laugh. “Let us know how you like the muffin. It’s a new flavor we’re testing out.”

And with that, she turns back to the bar, because apparently Bellamy Blake cannot flirt to save his life, even when he has fifteen days left until losing face completely, and the most beautiful ass in the world comes up to him with a chocolate muffin.

***

He sees Nate on campus that day, because, predictably, they take one Shakespeare class together, which was the worst mistake Bellamy made this term. The last thing he needs is giving his opinions on Much Ado About Nothing with Miller’s snickering right at his elbow.

“How’s your virginity?” he asks as soon as they finish the class, an innocent grin on his troll face.

“Have you ever considered trying to go and fuck yourself?” asks Bellamy in a long-suffering tone, suddenly feeling just how little sleep he had last night. Too little sleep. Most definitely too little sleep. He needs more coffee. He might be developing a caffeine problem.

“I have,” says Nate, unmoved. “Then I decided to ask this guy out instead. You’ll like him. Great ass.”

Maybe, thinks Bellamy, it’s not that ass was the theme of the day during that memorable conversation a year ago. Maybe Miller is developing an ass problem, and it’s rubbing off on Bellamy as well.

Which, now that he thinks about it, isn’t a very good mental image.

“So are you ready to admit that you have no life right away? You can just surrender, Bell. Preserve some of your dignity. Not much. But a little bit.”

“Kindy go and fuck yourself.”

***

Bellamy spends the rest of the day bracing himself, and listing arguments in his head. Obviously if he’s to ask anyone out, it needs to be the cute barista girl named Raven, for muffin reasons, and ass reasons as well, curse Nate Miller for planting this idea in his head.

Not that it is, on principle, a bad ass. Quite the opposite. But Bellamy Blake has some spiritual needs, damn it, and he will not be reduced to his basest urges. Especially not as he attempts to desperately fulfill a shallow wager and gain fleeting coolness points with a troll friend who will consider him a hipster nun even if he gets laid five times a week.

At this point, he spots a slight paradox in his reasoning, and decides to just give up and go to sleep. Which proves to be quite a challenge, given the amount of coffee he mindlessly consumed during the day. What do they put in that flat white, some supersoldier combat shit?

By the time his alarm rings, he’s had five hours of sleep, which is just little enough for him not to question that yesterday he took three hours to get through sixty pages of his book, despite liking said book. Of course he wants to go back to the coffee shop to read. It increases his productivity to change the scenery as he studies.

That’s why he always sits at the same table with full view of the bar.

“Flat white?” asks Raven as he stumbles in, and he smiles at her like the moron he is, all clever ideas suddenly gone from his head. What was he going to do? Ask her to the movies? Compliment her earrings? Start an actual human conversation?

“Yes please,” he says instead, and as he pulls out his wallet, he hears his phone chime.

_Days left: 14. In case you’re starting to forget where to put it, please find attached an appropriate gif._

To which Bellamy replies blindly: _Go duck yuorself._

Ah yes. This will be such a good day.


	2. Flat White

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raven Reyes is the coolest cucumber to ever cucumber, and she does not have it bad at the slightest.

Raven Reyes starts her day of work by walking into the staff room and repeatedly banging her head against the wall over the sink.

See, this is what happens when you don’t get laid enough. You start doing dumb shit.

The muffin yesterday was bad enough, and she should’ve known to quit after that, but no. Of course no. That would be reasonable, and we are above that here in Raven Land. Here, we blush like fools when we see the book guy enter the shop, and we rush eagerly to guess his favorite coffee because that’s what we are. Fucking pathetic.

“Just ask him out already,” sighed Monty as he was ironing a shirt before his date last night. A date that, it needs to be said, resulted in some asshole in a tshirt drinking coffee out of Raven’s mug in the kitchen this morning.

“Shut up,” she said, indignated. “I just like his ass.”

Well, it is quite a good ass, notices Raven sadly as the guy steps out of the shop two hours later, and she gets to watch him wistfully. Fuck, Reyes, get a fucking grip. Go out. Buy a dildo. Anything.

 _Okay, you’re right. I have no life,_ she writes to Monty in a moment of self-pity. He texts her back immediately.

_On the bright side, your ass isn’t sore?_

_Boo fucking hoo_

***

Today is Monty’s turn to cook dinner, which means Raven fully expects to come home to a box of pizza or some suspicious Chinese takeaway, because Monty, true to his profession, is too busy either inventing rocket fuel or drinking it. How he gets money for all those experiments he does, Raven doesn’t know, and she cherishes her ignorance, which means she never sets foot on their shared balcony. Just in case.

But for once, she’s surprised. When she enters the kitchen, she stumbles upon the guy from the morning, sporting a frightfully checkered apron and running around what seems to be a perfectly edible pan full of homemade pasta sauce. Monty is lying on his stomach on the kitchen floor, surrounded by textbooks, and Raven has a very vivid mental image of why exactly he is on his stomach today of all days, but she tries not to think about it now. Pasta. Focus on pasta. It doesn’t matter that other people are getting laid, as long as you have pasta.

“I’m Nate,” says the apron dude, and extends his hand in greeting, oblivious of the tomato sauce on his wrist. “Sorry about this morning.”

“At least you wore pants,” notices Raven brightly, her attention on the stove. “Is that pasta?”

“Told you,” mutters Monty from the floor, then pushes a piece of paper in Raven’s general direction. “Physics. Next week, you are coming to class.”

Right. She is. She needs to put that into the roster at work. But in the meantime, she has priorities.

“Pasta?” she whines, and Nate gives her a winning smile.

“My friend’s best recipe,” he announces as he starts filling three plates with food. “The guy is a pathetic no-life, but he knows how to cook.”

“You adore him,” points out Monty wisely. Nate shrugs.

“I can think he is a miserable nerd _and_ adore him at the same time. I’m complicated.”

As for Raven, she focuses on the pasta being delicious, full of meat and onions and general goodness. So what if she’s about to shrivel and die from lack of sex if there is such wonderful food in the world? Maybe she should rethink her despair.

***

The guy shows up again two days later, because apparently he is one of those losers who can’t motivate himself to get any work done at home. This time, he swapped his Sarah Waters for some mysterious book wrapped in a newspaper, so obviously Raven immediately suspects Fifty Shades. See, he isn’t perfect. No point idealizing him. He’s less cool than she imagines, and his ass isn’t even that great. She is over him. So over him.

“What are you reading?” she asks as soon as he makes his way to the bar. This is how cool she is.

Or not. Because the guy immediately loses his winning smile, and shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Fifty Shades. Must be Fifty Shades.

“Hemingway,” he admits with a pained expression, then musters up the courage to look up at Raven. “I’m writing a paper.”

“You don’t like Hemingway?” she asks, still very cool, no running towards him with free muffins or anything. No, she is just bored. There aren’t any people queuing up behind him, so here she is, being polite while fixing him a flat white. Which, she realizes once she holds a cup in her hand, he hasn’t even ordered yet.

The guy makes a face that’s somewhere between embarrassment and constipation, but doesn’t run away.

“I loved him when I was sixteen. Now I’m rereading for the paper and regretting all my life choices. Do you like him?”

Raven shrugs. Truth is, she doesn’t really care one way or the other, she doubts she even read the guy in high school. She was too busy delivering pizza and being a math genius.

“Should I check him out?” she asks, most of her mental capacities focused on that fucking flat white. Think, Reyes. Think.

“No. The world of no. Love yourself. Read, like… Literally anything else.”

It’s because of the flat white, she will say later. Because of the flat white, and Monty’s horrible jokes after dinner last night, and possibly her hopeless lack of sex. Yes. That’s why.

“Like what, Fifty Shades?” she asks, then covers her mouth with her hand in silent horror. “Oh my fucking God. Forget I said that.”

But it’s too late. The guy is laughing is gorgeous ass off, which, to be fair, isn’t as loud as explosive as it could be, maybe because he hasn’t had coffee yet. The coffee she’s holding in both hands in front of her, even though he hasn’t ordered it. Why hasn’t he ordered? Doesn’t he have, like, stuff to do? Things, other than making baristas cry by asking innocent questions.

“You know what?” he chokes out eventually. “I’ll take Fifty Shades. At least it doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t. Is this for me?”

Flustered, Raven charges two fifty for that flat white, not even bothering to look at the menu behind her and check how much it actually costs.

So, that’s it. She reached the rock bottom, and she will never speak to the guy again. Here it is, the perfect ass floating away with hipster glasses. She will die a virgin, probably. For a given value of “virgin”.

Her resolution lasts for about forty minutes, because like it or not, she is still on shift, and there is no one else to take the order when the guy crawls back to the bar, smiles sheepishly, and asks for a slice of cheesecake.

“Hey, would you like to go out with me?” Raven hears herself say, because apparently her brain decided that if she can’t make things any worse today, she might as well try.

For a moment, there is stunned silence. The guy looks at her with a sort of bewilderment usually reserved for moderately intelligent cats, then takes a step back.

“For real?” he asks in a hushed voice. “You mean it?”

“If you don’t want…”

“I want to!” he interrupts enthusiastically, then finally breaks out a distracting grin that makes him look like a James Potter who forgot to die. “Today… No, wait. Tomorrow? Is tomorrow good for you?”

She nods, but before she can say more, another customer steps in, and she rushes to greet him with a flustered smile, holy shit, she has a date. She actually has a date. How?

Two hours and many customers later, she realizes that the book guy is still sitting at his table without his slice of cheesecake, and also she still doesn’t know his name.


	3. Good Side, Bad Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy has good intentions, terrible friends, and even worse dramatic timing. File under: Advanced Trolling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I was writing this, and then life happened. Today I reread the first two chapters, decided that I am delightful, and this baby deserves to be finished. Let's see how long I last this time...

On his way back home, Bellamy walks into approximately three lamp posts, four trash bins and one stray child, but at least he doesn’t lose the napkin on which Raven wrote her phone number, so he still counts the journey a success. The only thing he needs to remember now is to never ever tell Miller that instead of asking her to punch her number into his phone like a reasonable person would, he pulled a napkin bookmark out of his Hemingway and shoved it into her hand together with a pen. He is lucky she didn’t offer to send it back to him by the next pigeon post. 

No matter. Moving on: he has a dinner date tomorrow, and he needs to take it like an adult. Be practical. Have a plan.

Obviously anything fancy is out of the question, because he is a student who spends most of his money on rent and coffee, and then agonizes over the price of takeout before inevitably ordering it anyway, curse him and his lush soul. He is sure those few dollars he throws away once every few weeks are what makes all of the difference in the sea of crippling debt. But, he’s getting distracted. Date. He has to plan a date.

By the time he finally gets home, he has mentally googled all the acceptable food places in the general area of the coffee shop, which possibly accounts for the unfortunate incidents with the child and the lamp posts. For trash bins, he has no excuse.

***

_Days left: 12. Remember that dildos only count when attached to actual humans._

What Bellamy was going to do: be cool. Ignore Nate’s text like a cool and chill person he is, go awol for two days, then think of an appropriately sassy retort, because ‘gotcha, asshole’ doesn’t really have the right ring.

What Bellamy actually does: text back.

_Shut it. I have a date today_

The reply comes with a speed that makes him consider whether Nate has twenty fingers.

_That, I gotta see_

Well, fuck.

***

Unfortunately for Bellamy, Nate knows exactly where he lives, which may or might not have to do with the multiple drunken sleepovers (no, not like that, you dirty little leers, at least not in the last year or two, get your minds out of the gutter). How he knew when Bellamy would leave for his date remains a mystery. Was he just sitting in the bushes outside Bellamy’s apartment building since lunch time, waiting for his moment to shine? Quite possibly yes. Either way, he catches up with Bellamy after about two minutes from him leaving the apartment.

“Bell! Fancy seeing you here!”

“I live here.”

“And you never leave like the no-life you are. Are you heading to the library?”

Bellamy shoots him a dirty look, and Nate responds with a grin so fake it’s a wonder they didn’t kick him out of drama class yet.

“I have a date,” points out Bellamy, entirely unsure why he keeps walking into Nate’s traps despite seeing them coming. Glutton for punishment, he decides. He is a glutton for punishment.

“What a surprise! So do I.”

Bellamy bites his lip.

“And where are you meeting your date?”

“Wherever you’re meeting yours.”

Right. It’s not like Bellamy didn’t see this coming.

***

On the bright side: he shows up on his date dressed like an adult, wearing vaguely uncomfortable contact lenses, not carrying incriminating books, and only slightly caffeine deprived.

On the less bright side: he very obviously shows up with Nathan fucking Miller in tow, and all the explanations that come to his mind sound like pure fucking slapstick.

On the disastrous side: Raven looks so fucking gorgeous in a pair of jeans and a nice, fitted t-shirt that he forgets human speech in favor of internal drooling.

“Hi,” says Raven when she sees him, and gives him a small wave, which is good. It gives him time to swallow, and try to act cool. Be cool. You have a date. You have a life. You can be cool, and you won’t die lonely and miserable, surrounded by pizza boxes and butt plugs.

“Hi,” he responds, and adds his most winning smile, so far so good. Now, to the awkward part.

“Listen, I need to tell you something,” he says, because that’s not dramatic at all. Raven tilts her head.

“Are you okay?” she asks, visibly concerned. In the background, Bellamy can see Nate casually giving someone directions over the phone. Focus, Blake. Fucking focus. Don’t be a nun.

“Yeah, fine. Stupid, but fine. Anyway. I have this friend.” Okay, that’s good. Start with the basics. “And he…”

“Wait a minute,” interrupts Raven, looking over his shoulder to double-check. “Nate is your friend?”

Nunnery, here he comes. Monk-nerry. Whatever.

“You know Nate?” asks Bellamy stupidly, too close to hysterical laughter to ask reasonable questions.

“He is dating my flatmate,” says Raven with her eyes fixed on Bellamy’s face, and this is it. The moment when vaguely reasonable explanations were still within his reach comes at passes as Bellamy takes a moment to consider all the mistakes he’s ever made in his life.

“Please don’t get mad, but I made a bet with Nate that I have to get laid within a year or else I have to admit I have no life. I have twelve days left, I think Nate just camped in front of my apartment for the whole day to make sure I didn’t make you up, and he might or might not have just called up your flatmate to arrange a double date.”

***

The fact that the next seven minutes don’t end with him getting slapped is a miracle beyond recognition. Nathan Miller, curse on him and curse on his goats, comes up to them with a shit-eating grin, announces that Monty would be a little bit late, then asks them what they think about pizza.

Well, you have to give that to Nate. He might be a demon from the nine circles of hell, but a spendthrift, he is not. Thank God for small mercies.

The mysterious man named Monty is already waiting for them at the pizza place, and he is a lot shorter than Bellamy thinks Nate’s type would be, but then, he himself just scored his first and last date with Raven here, so who is he to talk? Either way, Monty looks just high enough to be relaxed about the awkward situation he is about to find himself in, neither of which can be said about Raven.

I’m a fuckboy, Bellamy realizes with absolute and horrific clarity. I’m the worst kind of fuckboy. The self-aware kind.

So in a dramatic gesture he uses the moment of distraction caused by Miller leaning to kiss Monty hello, and turns to Raven.

“I promise I didn’t just… well, get asked out because of the goddamned bet. I don’t even care about the bet. I’m a loser. I have no life. I didn’t know Nate would be coming. Please go out with me again. Without Nate. Or with Nate. Let’s take Nate on a date, take him to the airport, and put him on a plane somewhere very far away. It sounds like a fun date activity. Please don’t hate me.”

But before he can get an answer, Miller turns to him jovially, and gives him something resembling a mock bow.

“And this is Bellamy. I told you about him. Great ass. Terrible life choices.”

There is a moment of silence, possibly because Miller’s dramatic ass can’t imagine anything else, and Bellamy can see Raven’s gaze going from Monty to Miller to himself. This is it, he realizes. She is going to turn around, and run all the way to the opposite coast.

Instead she stays with her eyes fixed on him, her face does something funny, and then she bursts out laughing.

“At least now I know your name,” she manages as she gives him a friendly punch on the shoulder. “Just… Go order us all a pepperoni, okay? I’m gonna need it.”


End file.
